


the consequence of living in between

by moonmoss



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (to be safe), Canon-Typical Gender Fluidity, Fix-It, Missy Deserved Better, Other, Panic Attacks, Post-Episode: s12e01-02 Spyfall, The Vault (Doctor Who), a lot of stuff from s10 is mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:33:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22233355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonmoss/pseuds/moonmoss
Summary: Graham pokes for more answers than the Doctor means to give. The Doctor remembers an oath unfulfilled. The Vault under St Luke's regains an occupant.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair
Comments: 22
Kudos: 181





	the consequence of living in between

It’s Graham who finally cracks and probes her again. Curious, always curious. It’s what she’s always loved about humans, and yet somehow her friends’ questioning gazes make her skin crawl now.

The day is winding down, they're all huddled in the TARDIS’s library, a fire crackling to the side and blankets draped over their laps. The Doctor feels cold to her bones but every time she shuts her eyes, she can swear she can feel flames licking up her calves, stinging at her knees and crawling up her skin like she’s standing there, in the citadel amongst the rubble. Like she’s burning with her home.

Again.

“Are you okay?” Graham asks. The three of them have been doing this a lot in the past few weeks since… since the Master. The Doctor knows they want to know more, but she can’t bear it. Can’t bear to say more than the perfunctory facts she’d given away when they’d first asked – _my name is the Doctor. I’m from Gallifrey. I’m a thief and a coward who runs from everything and loved and loves the wrong person._

She can’t bear to talk about the past when she _finally_ thought she might be moving on, happy with where she _is_ rather than where she’d _been_. Happy to put Gallifrey, Bill, Nardole, Clara, even the Master behind her… then of course, he came crashing back into her life.

Of course. Isn’t it always the Master in the end?

The Doctor tries for a smile, but the muscles feel far away for once. She just nods instead. “I’m fine! I’m always fine.”

“You… Who was he?” Graham finally says. “The Master bloke? You said he was your oldest friend, that you went different ways, but…” he trails off and the Doctor looks at him, swallowing past the lump in her throat. “But the way you _looked at him_ , Doc… and what he _did_.”

The Doctor looks away. “This blanket’s right soft,” she murmurs, rubbing her fingers over the fabric.

“Doctor?”

She forces a laugh and meets Ryan’s gaze. “It’s fine!” she says. “He’s… the Master, he’s…” she can’t even begin to think of a lie. “I’ve known them a long time,” she finishes eventually. “But I always win out in the end! No worries.” She glances to the fire and tries not to think of her old body, dying on the ground watching the sky and wishing, _hoping_ …

The Doctor had never wanted anything so badly as _he_ had in that moment, no stars above him and hands shaking in the dirt, thinking of Bill and Nardole and trying his best not to think about _them_ – Missy and the snarling, drumbeat version of the Master. Trying not to think about the Master at all, actually. His oldest friend. His best enemy. The Doctor still tries not to think about them, but she remembers her hand pressing into his, her light breath of relief as she’d hissed ‘ _I was on your side all along_ ’.

The Vault was supposed to be a prison, but the Doctor misses their time with the Master down there more with every beat of their hearts. Misses watching her fingers press on piano keys, misses watching _Bill_ watch her with a wariness and Missy smirking back, the two almost playful in the end. She misses their talks, misses their nights spent in silence with bad Chinese takeout and misses watching the Master start to cry, start to _feel_ , start to repent. Misses cradling her hands in his. Misses watching the Master start to love them again. Misses their friend.

“Doc?” comes a voice.

The Doctor flinches, and immediately hides it as a jerking motion as if she’s standing up. She will, she thinks. She’ll leave, avoid this conversation.

“I’m getting itchy feet,” she says, bouncing on her heels to emphasise the statement. “You guys good? Do you want me to drop you home to recuperate more, I know the Master can be traumatising, if you need to deal with it more, I understand, I can pick you back up in a few mo-”

“Doctor,” Yasmin interrupts, and her voice is quiet, and her eyes are shining. “ _Seriously_. Are you okay?”

The Doctor laughs. “Don’t be silly! I’m always-!”

“You’re crying,” says Ryan bluntly.

She freezes. Touches her cheeks and then clenches her fingers around the wetness that comes away. “Ha!” she glances to the fire. “Weird, that! Don’t worry about it, I probably just need a nice long run down a corridor while being blasted at by-”

“Stop lying to us,” he snaps. “Just stop! Why are you pretending everything’s fine!? Yasmin nearly _died_ , we all nearly died, and you… you!” he cuts himself off and waves a hand at her.

“I _what_?”

“You said the person behind all that was your _friend_ , and you keep flinching whenever we land somewhere new and you keep avoiding the subject and you’re either too quiet or can’t stop rambling, and… and something _clearly_ happened!”

The Doctor waves a hand. “The usual happened! We chatted, I played the Master at his own game and saved the universe because I’m very clever!”

There’s a moment of quiet. The fire crackles. The Doctor’s breathing is heavy.

 _And he left_ , her traitorous mind continues. _He looked at my offered hand and he laughed. Again. All that work, all those years with Missy… gone._ She can see him in her mind’s eye – smile like a snarl and hair swept and dark eyes glinting, can see her past self offering his hand and Missy taking it but walking away all the same.

‘ _I mean_ ,’ he’d said, ‘ _how else_ _would I get your attention?_ ’

And the Doctor had wanted to scream.

Even after all this, she’s sure, she _knows_ , deep in her hearts, that those hours in the Vault, those short years outside of it, those soft smiles and earnest tears… she’s sure they were real. That Missy, the _Master_ was changing. That they were getting their friend back.

Where had it all gone wrong?

“Doctor!?”

 _Oh_. Yasmin, Ryan, Graham. They’re still here. She’s on her knees and her throat is sore and she can’t see properly, vision blurred. There’s a hand on her shoulder.

Of course, it would be _them._ Of course, it would be the Master to make her finally lose it in front of her friends. She thinks of a million forced smiles and laughs she’d been forcing since Grace’s death and she finds herself choking on her own breath.

“My oldest friend,” she whispers, voice hoarse from the strain of holding back tears for this long. If the mask is cracked what’s the point of having it at all? She can find new friends when these ones run from her. Or she can be alone for a while. Either works. She hasn’t been alone for a while. Maybe it’s time.

“He was my best friend. Back when I was a kid.” She pauses, remembering telling Bill on a rooftop and watching her eyes widen in horror at each word. How Bill had spent a few weeks skittish and nervous around him, wary. Understandably.

But she can’t bring herself to stop. Can’t bring herself to look at Yasmin or Graham or Ryan, or anything except the blank wall opposite.

“I wanted to see the universe, so I took off, and he… he wanted to burn it. I had to stop him,” she sucks in a breath and the rest comes in a rush. “I always have to stop them. But he was my friend first. We swore when we were kids that we’d see the stars _together_ and we’re still… he’s the only person like me. Even _remotely_ like me. How can I not love them? After my planet died we were the only ones left and I had to watch him die and be _smug_ about it, and then my planet _wasn’t_ even dead, and _then_ …” she closes her eyes, the sensation of Missy’s hand pressing into hers too strong to bear so she shoves her palms against the floor instead, cool metal digging into her skin.

“I thought… last time we met, I thought… I thought I’d got through to her. I thought she understood, she was _repenting_ , she served her life sentence, she went through her execution and I… I thought she’d really redeemed herself, that she was on my side for once. And then she was gone. And then I died. And now,” she waves a hand vaguely. “This.”

“…this?” Graham prods gently.

“Back to ‘haha Doctor it’s me! Here’s my funky fresh new evil plan!’ and I’m back to having to stop him from burning galaxies, and I just. I can’t do it anymore. I miss him. I miss her. I miss them. We’re so alike. I just want my friend back. I need my friend back.” 

When the Doctor opens her eyes, Graham, Yasmin and Ryan are still there, sitting opposite her and looking… well a little bit horrified. But also a lot of other things too.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“There’s a lot about you we don’t know,” says Graham carefully. “But, Doc… we know your heart’s always in the right place. You’d never harm us.”

“You’re allowed to miss your friend,” adds Yasmin.

“Even if all that stuff you just said was _really_ confusing,” nods Ryan.

“The last person that travelled with me,” the Doctor presses a hand to her stomach and meets their gazes at last. “The Master shot her through the stomach and made her into a Cyberman. This sort of… emotionless machine. She made another of my friend’s kill her own boyfriend just because she wanted to give me an army I didn’t even want. He tortured another friend’s family for a whole year, slaughtered ten percent of the population with one command and turned the rest to slaves and _dust_. That was only the past few times we’ve met. It’s always the same, even if the Master isn’t involved. Everyone who travels with me… it’s not safe. Stuck in another dimension, memory wiped, traumatised and running scared from me, _dead,_ abandoned… I’m not safe to be around.”

“Doc. We said when we stepped into this box,” says Graham. “After the whole spider thing. We _know_. We’re okay with it. We’re sure.”

Yasmin smiles. The Doctor sees a thousand ghosts smiling with her. She thinks about Gallifrey burning before her eyes and remembers her only thought had been, _I’m alone again._

Selfish. Always so selfish.

Graham reaches out to grip at her hand.

“My planet’s gone,” she blurts out. “I burned it once myself and then changed my mind and now it’s burning again. I don’t know what to do. He told me about this secret that changed everything and maybe that’s why he changed again, but I… I’m scared to look. I’m scared to find out.”

Yasmin reaches for her other hand. “Your home? Gallifrey?”

The Doctor nods. “He did that too,” she mutters. “Our home.”

“…if you’ve stopped it burning once, you can do it again,” says Graham.

And the Doctor _had_ done it once, hadn’t they? With Clara Oswald smiling at them and a dozen versions of themself at their back. She remembers. A gauntlet shooting energy at Rassilon. The Master in his arms, dying.

_‘You mean you're just going to keep me?’_

_‘If that's what I have to do. It's time to change. Maybe I've been wandering for too long. Now I've got someone to care for.’_

“We’re the last ones left,” says the Doctor. “Again. I trapped him and left him for dead. He’s supposed to be my friend.”

‘ _I wonder what I’d be, without you.’_

_‘Yeah.’_

Ryan frowns. “To be fair, he was going to destroy the universe or whatever.”

_‘Get out of the way.’_

“He’s my friend.”

‘ _I need you to know we're not so different. I need my friend back._ ’

“…turned enemy?” Yasmin points out.

_‘Of course she's not dead. She's a friend of mine.’_

“Doctor?”

_‘I swore an oath I'd look after her body for a thousand years.’_

“Doctor, are you-?”

‘ _The alternative is that this is for real, and it's time for us to become friends again._ ’

But the Doctor’s stopped listening. She pushes their hands away and runs to the console room. Whatever the Master had done. Whatever he’d found out about Gallifrey, she doesn’t want to deal with it alone.

‘ _Stand with me. It's all I've ever wanted.’_

 _‘Me too._ ’

Maybe this time the Master will take her hand.

“What’re you doing?” 

_'On my oath as a Time Lord of the Prydonian Chapter, I will guard this body for a thousand years.'_

She tugs on a lever to send them into flight. “Keeping my oath.”

* * *

The TARDIS lands with its usual thump. The Doctor dashes out without a second glance, grabbing her coat from a railing as she passes. She pulls it on as she walks out into the warehouse. The Silver Lady sits before her and she’s already buzzing over it with her sonic as Graham, Yaz and Ryan come out of the TARDIS behind her.

“Doctor…?” Yasmin asks.

“They trapped him with them in their dimension.”

 _A new Vault_? She thinks, before quickly dismissing the idea, imagining her _oldest_ friend trapped in that void and surrounded by nothing but that horrible cold buzz of flickering lights and blue and tendrils reaching up as far as the eye could see.

She snatches the Silver Lady from the podium and runs back into the TARDIS, hands trembling over the controls as she sets in the familiar coordinates. She heads out again without a word, ignoring Graham’s expression as she passes. Knows they’ll follow.

“Where are we?” Ryan asks.

“My office,” says the Doctor, heading over to her old desk.

The portraits are still there, sitting neatly. River. Susan. She half expects Nardole to come bumbling in with a tray of tea neither of them drink, or for Bill to pop in with a wide smile and a new wad of paper in her hands.

She shakes her head, runs a finger over River’s cheek. Shakes her head again. The drawer slides open with a click and she brings out an old set of keys.

“Your _office_?” Graham repeats, as they move back into the TARDIS one last time.

The Doctor nods. “I was a teacher here for about. Hm. Seventy years? Back before I met you lot.”

“Can’t see you teaching,” he mumbles. “You never sit still.”

“I did back when I was old,” she says.

“Who’s the women in the photos?” asks Ryan.

The Doctor tugs on a lever and the TARDIS jolts even as it lands a few floors below.

The Vault doors are dull, the lights dim. Uninhabited. The Doctor keys it open, three physical keys, two settings on the sonic, a few coded taps. The thick doors clunk open. She presses a palm to the glass box in the centre when she reaches it and the panel slides open. She places the Silver Lady in the centre and then backs out, closes the panel once more. A box within a box within a Vault.

“Explain,” Graham prods. “What’s this place? Why is there a piano? What _oath_?”

The Doctor shifts. “This is a Vault. The Master asked for it. The Fatality Index,” she says. Throw nonsense at them and make it sound like an answer. “Killing a Time Lord is tough work; we tend to fix ourselves up. So they asked me to watch over the Master’s body for a thousand years.”

“But the Master’s alive…?”

“I fiddled with the wiring.” And with that, she’s had enough. Wants to do this before she loses her nerve. She turns to the Silver Lady and reverses her last actions, draws the Kasaavin back into this realm.

“Hello,” she says. “Bit of a misunderstanding. Give me the Master back.”

The Kasaavin hiss, their light pulsating brighter, angrier.

“Oh, don’t. I have you trapped here," she bluffs. "It’s either stay in this Vault for eternity, or give him to me and I send you back to your dimension. Your choice.”

“Doctor,” Yasmin hisses. “What are you-?”

“Your choice,” the Doctor repeats, gaze hard fixed on the Kasaavin. “If you doubt my ability or my conviction, ask your prisoner about my history.”

They growl in response for a long moment, but then their light fades in the centre, folding in on itself until the Master’s form appears in the empty space between their light.

“Thanks!” the Doctor bares her teeth and raises the sonic again. “Have a nice existence.” And she exiles them back to their dimension once more.

The Master glares at her. “Really?” he spits. “You brought me _here_?”

“On my oath as a Time Lord of the Prydonian Chapter,” says the Doctor, fist curling at her side. “I will guard this body for a thousand years. By my calculations we’re only about seven percent through that agreement.”

The Master hits the glass with his palms. “You let me out before,” he snarls. “You’ll do it again.”

“I let out my _friend,_ who was _repenting_. Who I _trusted,_ ” says the Doctor coldly. “Let me know if they decide to spare me a glance again.”

And with that, she turns to leave.

_‘I once built a gun out of leaves. Do you think I couldn't get through a door if I wanted to? I'm here, all right? I'm engaging with the process.’_

She ignores his yelling, ignores the pounding of his fists against the glass.

She ignores it until she’s back safe in the TARDIS, the Vault triple locked and reinforced behind her and she’s too busy ignoring her hands shake.

“Doc,” comes Graham’s voice, soft. “Are you alri-?”

“Don’t,” she interrupts, pushing a few buttons. The TARDIS begins the short journey upstairs. It lands with a light hum. Gentle. A warmth presses against the Doctor’s mind and she closes her eyes, allows herself a moment to accept the comfort her beautiful box offers.

She strokes a panel on the console and moves to leave.

Her office is the same as he’d left it – the Doctor who was Scottish and whose knees ached when it rained. She suddenly misses being him – awkward and old and _kind_. She runs a hand over his desk and sinks into his chair and thinks of how he’d feel if he saw her now. Distant. Running from her own friends even as she calls them family.

She closes her eyes for a moment.

“This is your office?” asks Yasmin, and the Doctor can see her taking in all the details he’d accumulated over seventy years – the pot of sonics on the desk, the rug that Bill had bought him sitting snug under the TARDIS, the empty guitar stand in the corner. The book Missy had been reading propped open on a chair. One of Nardole’s hats on a peg on the door.

She closes her eyes against the memories.

“In a past life,” she nods eventually.

“You said you worked here for seventy years?”

“Hm.”

“What’s with the oath?” asks Yasmin. “Why did you swear to guard his body for a _thousand_ years?”

_Because they asked me to kill her and I couldn’t bear it. Because she swore she’d turn good._

“Without hope,” the Doctor whispers. “Without witness. Without reward.”

“… yeah that doesn’t explain anythin’,” mumbles Ryan.

The Doctor runs a hand over her face. “The woman in the portrait is. _Was._ My wife. Professor River Song,” she doesn’t dare look at them. At _her_. “She sent a friend to the place of execution, reminded me of… well, myself. Not to be an idiot.”

Graham smiles, and the Doctor is surprised to find she can smile back and _mean_ it.

“Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage,” she quotes, and if she unfocuses her gaze she can almost imagine she’s back there with Missy and Nardole and _hope_ in front of him. “Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit. Without hope. Without witness. Without reward. Virtue is only virtue in extremis.”

“…was your wife a poet?” asks Ryan.

The Doctor snorts. “She was an archaeologist.”

“…you… you married an archaeologist?” Yasmin laughs slightly, slipping into the seat on the other side of the desk. “You’re a time traveller?”

“So was she,” the Doctor smiles fondly. River Song. The enigma, even now. Not to the Doctor of course, not now. There was no mystery left, not when she knows River’s story back to front and front to back. There’s only grief and distant fondness left.

She lets out a breath.

“Anyway,” the Doctor shakes her head. “I need to find the Chancellor and explain that I’m not an old Scot anymore.”

“Or a man.”

“Hm?”

“You and the Master, you’ve both like… alluded to it,” says Yasmin. “And the Master’s the same? You use different pronouns for… him? Sometimes?”

The Doctor blinks.

“It’s fine!” adds Ryan quickly. “Whatever… whoever you are, we’re cool. You’re still the Doctor, right?”

“…yes,” the Doctor nods, uncomfortable. “To human perception I used to be a man. Keep forgetting that’s changed honestly.”

“Human perception?”

“I’m a Time Lord,” the Doctor points out. “We don’t have the same concept of gender as you do. I’ve never really grasped it, but the Master loved playing into it. She went all out.”

_‘I can’t very well keep calling myself the Master now can I?’_

The Doctor shivers. She can’t imagine even _thinking_ about changing her name just because some humans saw her differently. Names to Time Lords, the names they _chose…_ the promise they made… changing that for a joke at humanity’s expense was horrifying. And at the same time so perfectly in line with the Master’s nonsense that the Doctor had played along.

“Anyway,” she clears her throat. “You’re right. I’ve been here for seventy years without ageing or ever so much as glancing at a syllabus so I think I can get away with it. Clearly they aren’t paying that much attention to me as long as I get their statistics up. I can always use a perception filter if it becomes an issue.”

“So…” Graham frowns. “You’re just going to. Stay here? Guarding him again?”

“Hm,” the Doctor nods. “I know the Master was making progress before. I can reach him again.”

“What changed?”

_Gallifrey. Burning._

The Doctor blinks.

“I need to talk to him,” she realises. “You lot stay here. I won’t be long.”

The Master smiles at the sight of her, sharp and toothy. “Not bringing your pets along?”

“What happened to Missy? What happened to the Master?” the Doctor asks tiredly. “You pressed that blade into my hand, you were trying to _tell_ me something. I didn’t see either of you again.”

“What happened to your cyber friend?” he sneers.

“Bill’s fine. Travelling with her girlfriend now. Happy.” _Dead._ “Answer my question.”

The Master narrows his eyes. “Have you been home yet?”

The Doctor steps back. Doesn’t flinch, just starts pacing around the glass, forcing him to turn to keep her in his eyeline.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Why did you-?” she cuts herself off, tears stinging her eyes. “I’d only just got it back. We’d only just got it _back_. It was just sitting in a pocket universe not harming anyone. Why-!?”

“You haven’t looked up the Timeless Child yet?" his expression darkens. "They _lied_ to us, Doctor.” 

She changes tack. “What happened to Missy?”

The Master sighs. “She was stupid. Killed herself. Myself. Stabbed him in the back.”

The Doctor’s breath catches.

_‘Stand with me.’_

“Started spouting off about _you_ , and how she’d changed, and it was time to stand with you.”

_‘It’s all I’ve ever wanted.’_

“But of course, he was having none of it. Shot her with the full blast so she couldn’t regenerate. How else would it happen? What else would be my perfect ending but shooting myself in the back?”

The Doctor’s eyes are wide, stinging, her throat’s tight.

_‘Me too.’_

“No,” she whispers. “She… you were…? You were going to help me?”

 _‘But no. Sorry. Just… no._ ’

“A moment of weakness.”

‘ _But thanks for trying._ ’

The Doctor falls to her knees, hand reaching out to the glass to steady her.

“Ha!” the Master exclaims in joy. “I didn’t even have to _ask_ this time.”

“Master…”

“You’re so sentimental,” he says, somehow harsh and tender at the same time. He kneels by the side of the glass before her.

“You said,” the Doctor swallows, stares at him. “You said you needed your friend back. Remember? You gave me an army.”

The Master flinches, hides it quickly in laughter. “Lifetimes ago.”

“No,” the Doctor reaches out, presses the other palm to the glass. “I’m here. I want you. _Please_. Master.”

“…Doctor,” he sighs.

“This Vault worked once. You were going to stand with me. You’ve grown past that person who shot you in the back for daring to change. Your past doesn’t define you, _please_ …” she fumbles for a moment in her pocket, and when she grasps the sonic the panels of the glass box containing him slide away.

“Stand with me,” says the Doctor again, hand moving to him, the glass no longer separating them.

He grasps the offered hand, and she can feel him shaking.

“The Timeless Child. You don’t know wha-“

“I don’t care,” the Doctor interrupts. “The Council, the founding fathers, Rassilon. They’re all the _worst_. I’ve known that for centuries. Last time I was on Gallifrey I stole my friend back from the dead, kicked out the old President, stole another TARDIS and ran away again. You think I care where we came from? You think I care about any secret you might have found? I care about who _I_ am now. I care about who _you_ are, sitting in front of me. I care about who we _could be_. Nothing else _matters._ ”

The Master shakes his head.

“I’m sorry for leaving you behind,” she says. “In Paris. With the Kasaavin. I’m sorry. I want to help you again. No matter how many times it takes.”

He looks at her for a long moment, and she thinks she sees something familiar settle onto his features.

“Fine,” he mutters. “ _Fine_. What’s another nine hundred and thirty years?”

The Doctor _beams_.

“Would you change your answer?” he asks after a moment. “If I offered you an army now?”

The Doctor thinks of Clara’s face, thinks of her holding Danny’s metal form in a cold embrace.

“No,” she says. “Because I wouldn’t want you to offer. I’m not a hero, I don’t need an army. I need you to know that about me.”

“Just an idiot, right?” says the Master. “Helping out?”

“Exactly.”

He sighs and the Doctor can’t help but remember how it felt to kiss her then. In a graveyard, surrounded by death, an army before him ready to heed his call. His best friend before him, offering him the universe. 

“When we were young, we made a pact,” she says quietly. “Every star. Remember?”

He narrows his eyes.

“They’re still there,” she says. “And so are we. You don’t have to make these elaborate plots to get my attention, you’ve already got it, you’ve always _had_ it. Just stand with me. Please.”

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” the Master whispers.

‘ _Me too._ ’

He swallows. “I already messed it up once.”

“We all have relapses,” she says, thinking of Ada’s temples under her fingertips, begging her to let her keep her memories. Thinks of the way Clara and Bill had looked at her when he’d done the same in the past, had pushed him away in anger and he’d lowered his hands and let them go. Ada and Noor hadn’t been so lucky.

“I’ll try,” he says quietly. “I’ll try again. I’ll try to be good. Cold turkey like before.”

The Doctor nods.

Silence hangs between them for a moment.

“I’m… sorry,” he says finally, the words stiff and awkward and new in that mouth. “That when I found out about the Timeless Child, I just. Reacted. I could have looked for you then. Told you. We could’ve dealt with it together. But I just… it was too much.”

She doesn’t reply. She knows so much about the foundation of the Time Lords that barely anything she learns on top of it bothers her anymore. She’s so far from Gallifrey, so far from being a true Time Lord these days. Had grieved her home and then saved it and then lost it, then hated it, used it… the place had too much muddled history with her for whatever this new information is to make a difference. 

And then the words spill out of the Master’s mouth, the truth of the Timeless Child, and the Doctor’s hands shake and the Master grasps their shoulders and hisses, “I _know_ ,” and the Doctor feels cold to her bones but every time she shuts her eyes, she can swear she can feel flames licking up her calves, stinging at her knees and crawling up her skin like she’s standing there, in the citadel amongst the rubble. Like she’s burning with her home. _Their_ home.

But the Master’s hands press steady against hers, ground her. And he looks into her eyes with the same heat that’s shaking her to the core.

“My oldest friend, my best enemy,” she whispers, and she pulls him into her arms so he can’t see how her expression darkens. “If you had found me first, I would have burnt it all down with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> chibnall PLEASE acknowledge season 10 challenge 2k20 
> 
> shout out to [elizabeth](https://keptin--kirk.tumblr.com) for reading over this for me & for the title insp (heirloom by sleeping at last, imagined as missy's pov toward dhawan!master and the 'father' being the master's past incarnations). 
> 
> i'm on tumblr at [@antipear](https://antipear.tumblr.com/). thanks for reading!


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